Old recipes, etiquette and wallop

Being some notes and queries on subjects diverse.

Even more beers brewed to historic recipes

About this time last year, we tried to compile a reasonably complete list of beers being brewed to historic recipes. Now we note that one of the beers in the Sainsbury’s beer hunt is J.W. Lees Manchester Star, supposedly brewed to an 1884 porter recipe, and also hear news of a St Austell 1913 stout. (We’ve seen a recipe in their books from 1912, pictured.) The latest Fuller’s Past Masters beer, 1931 Burton Extra, has just been released. This summer also saw Camden brew a 1908 pale ale which was very tasty, but seemed (too us) rather too far from the original spec to really deserve the ‘historic’ tag.

Questions of pub etiquette

Maxwell asked this question on Twitter last night:

This might be a stupid question but humour me. How does one get their own tankard behind the bar of their local? #tankardetiquette

Watching the BFI’s Roll out the Barrel DVD again the other night, we particularly enjoyed Down at the Local (1945), a propaganda short made for British troops serving overseas. It was designed to remind them of home, and of why they were fighting, and shows scenes of pubs in London, Lancashire and Somerset. In London, the narrators decide on mild and so ask the barmaid for ‘two pints of wallop‘. In Preston, incidentally, they decide on bitter and mild and so order ‘mixed’.

A second talk at Eden

The Boak and Bailey edutainment roadshow was at the Eden Project again last weekend. There was no Oakham Green Devil IPA to demonstrate with this time, though, as it all got pilfered from a store cupboard. They left behind the St Austell HSD and Franziskaner.

2 thoughts on “Old recipes, etiquette and wallop”

I think I was pondering more on how nowadays where society is so much more transient due to work pressures but also transport availability that, do people still have a local in the old sense of the word?

Had the old boys with their tankards hanging up been going into the same pub almost exclusively for the last 20 or 30 years?

I’ve just moved to my fourth town, I’m in my thirties, I don’t think that’s particularly unusual in this day and age. I’ve found a nice pub in South West London I’d be happy to spend a lot of time in but there is always the temptation to go to Cask, Euston Tap, Craft Beer Co etc.

I guess what I’m rambling about is that, will there be those sort of local establishments when I’m in my sixties or seventies for me to even have a tankard in or will life be just one big pub crawl/beer festival from now on?

At the risk of being an UTTER DICKHEAD (cards on table), when I bought the 1840s quart-sized beer containing thingie, I learned it was not a “tankard” but a “pot” as there was no lid. That being said, I have always been leery of the rows of mugs by any other name up there due to the likelihood they are coated with gak. I want to bring in my own drinking vessel with me.

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We're geeks in general, but especially about beer and pubs. We write under the names Jessica Boak and Ray Bailey. We live in Cornwall in the UK. We've been blogging about beer since 2007. Email: contact@boakandbailey.com

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